Forget Me Not (3 page)

“Friends,” Gideon began, “we didn’t get to this position by luck.” He strolled around the locker room, making sure to look each one of his teammates in their eyes. “We got here with heart. We got here because we’re all dedicated. We trained our asses off. We ran drills until we dropped. Hell, I think even Thumper put on a clean jock one time.” He pointed to the large lineman standing behind the group.

“Nope!” Thumper responded and moved in closer to the group to share his stench.

“Damn, dude! Get the hell back.” Stephen, a running back, covered his nose and waved his hand in front of his face. “Offensive lineman is right. Your smell is brutal.”

Gideon and his teammates laughed but also made space around Thumper. Since
training camp, Thumper had convinced himself that wearing the same cup and jock strap without washing the duo kept him in high playing form. As a result, he reeked. Coaches had to keep him away from the press and charity events.

Not Gideon. It didn’t escape his attention that as quarterback, he’d become the face of the team. The press ate up his boy-next-door look, as one magazine described him.

He could care less about his appearance or what the female fans thought of him. He had a job to do, a game to play, a chance to be taken seriously as an athlete.

“To win, we’re going to have to remember our training.” Gideon didn’t raise his voice, a trait he’d learned from his mother. If spoken with conviction, people will listen. “We’re going to remember how we got here. We’re going to play like this could be the very last time we will ever play this sport we love again.” Gideon peered over his teammates’ heads when he saw the locker-room door opening. He focused on his team. “Play hard, men. Play with integrity. Win for Virginia.”

“Do it for the Gipper, man?” Dennis asked and then laughed.

Gideon smiled. “I don’t know what your girl’s name is now.”

The group of men around them laughed.

Dennis put his hand on Gideon’s shoulder and pulled him back. “I got this.”

“Got what?” Gideon felt his eyebrows knit together as he watched his friend move to the center of the room.

“We are Wolves!” Dennis shouted the encouraging words in the middle of the crowded locker room. He illustrated his exclamation by howling like a wolf, something their fans did on a regular basis for the team.

Gideon shook his head. He should have known Dennis would kick up the guys into a frenzy. He would have to be that calming voice of reason, even if his insides screamed along with Dennis.

The team, dressed in their standard red-black-and-gold uniforms, cheered while pumping their fists in the air.

“Fuck ‘Sharknado’! We all know a shark can’t beat a wolf, am I right?”

The team laughed and cheered at the same time.

“The Maui Sharks are going down!” Dennis raised his fists in the air.

Gideon put his hand on Dennis’s chest and faced him. “That’s enough.” As the quarterback, he had to be the leader. He had to set the mood for how the team played during this important game.

“Okay, guys. Huddle up
.
” Coach Brick, who must have walked into the locker-room area, waved his hands in the air signal the men to come together. “Christ, I can’t wait until this game is done so that you can take a damn bath, Thumper.”

The team laughed again.

“I bathe. It’s my jock that’s fragrant.” The big man cupped his crotch and grinned through his big, bushy red beard.

“Serious time, guys. Don’t think about this being the Super Bowl. Think about this as the game of your lives. Like Gid said, you’ve all trained for this. Stay smart. Stay sharp. Think two steps ahead of the other team. We can win this together. All in.” Brick put his hand palm down in the center of the circle.

The team put their hands on top of his.

Without prompting, the team shouted in unison, “Wolves rule!” Then they howled, leaning their heads back to project to the ceiling.

“Line up in the tunnel.” Brick pointed to the doorway.

The team all filtered out in a line with Gideon bringing up the rear. He picked up his shoulder pads and secured them onto his shoulders. One more thing he had to carry. He grabbed the collar portion of the weighted plastic protection to occupy his hands until he got onto the field.

“Uh, hold on, Gid.” Brick put a hand on Gideon’s chest.

Gideon peered down at his coach’s hand and took a step back as the rest of his team filed out of the room.

His coach epitomized his name. The former Hall of Famer stood about a foot shorter than Gideon’s six-foot-three height. His width nearly matched his height, and looking at the man from behind, it didn’t look like he had a neck. Topped off with his crew-cut hair, his coach looked like a pale brick.

Seeing the coach accelerated Gideon’s heartbeat. Gideon already had a hard time corralling his feelings about living out his dream at such a young age. Too bad he knew why he had arrived. His left knee throbbed as though it wanted to give its two cents about his situation.

“How are you feeling? You know all the plays?” Brick’s expression became somber.

Gideon tapped his temple. “Got them all. And I studied the Sharks’ previous games. They rely on their size to steamroll over their competition. It won’t happen to us.”

“And you’re doing okay?” His coach scanned Gideon from head to toe, purposefully stopping at Gideon’s knee area.

To refute his coach’s assumption, Gideon paced in his spot as he kept his gaze on Brick’s eyes. He couldn’t be seen as weak. No way could he miss this game.

“I’ve got a lot of pent-up energy. I can’t wait to get on the field.” Gideon pointed to the door to give his coach a hint to end this conversation.

“Okay. You got it.” Brick pointed to Gideon. “You know if you have any problems, you can tell me. We have Joshua waiting in the wings to fill in as quarterback. Push comes to shove, we can use Dennis.”

Gideon shook his head. “Why are you talking to me about contingency plans like I’m not going to play?”

Determination filled Gideon’s head and heart. He wouldn’t get himself to this point without seeing this game to the end.

Brick held up his hand to Gideon. “You’re right. If there’s nothing for anyone to worry about, I won’t press the issue.”

“Good.” He tried walking by Brick when the coach put his hand on Gideon’s shoulder.

“Did you get the shot?”

Gideon didn’t know what bothered him more, the fact that his coach knew Gideon had problems with his knee or the fact that he wanted him to push his body until he broke. He couldn’t put all the blame on Brick’s nonplussed reaction. Gideon had made it clear he would need to be dragged off the field for him to miss this game.

Gideon dropped his gaze and shook his head. “I don’t need it.” He wanted to do this win on his own head of steam, without chemical assistance.

Brick held up his electronic tablet. “The team doctor said—”

“He said they didn’t find anything wrong with my knee, not on the X-rays, not in the physical exam. Nothing.” He stared into his coach’s eyes when he spoke. “But I’m sure
the doctor wrote down I mentioned my knee had been bothering me. I took a hard hit the last game.”

“That was two weeks ago.” Brick scratched his head under his Wolves baseball cap.

Gideon didn’t need a reminder. He’d worked his knee out harder, trying to strengthen it for the game. His big mouth had gotten him in trouble. “I’m fine. I was fine through training. I was fine for our last game. I’m going to get us that championship.” Speaking with conviction had to help him now.

Brick stared at him for a moment. “Lord knows, I want this championship. It’s been fifteen years since I led a team to a Super Bowl win. I want you to bring that home to me.” He pointed in Gideon’s face. “One time. Mess up once, and I’m pulling you. Got that?”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Gideon smiled to assure his coach. “And sorry for interrupting you earlier. I’m passionate about playing. I can’t get this far only to be benched.”

“Understood. But know that if I know, the other guys know.” He patted Gideon. “Watch yourself.”

Gideon nodded. “Understood.” He grabbed his jersey from his assigned locker. He slipped it over his head but kept his cell phone. Win or lose, the first people he wanted to talk to after the game would be his family.

“Play hard, son.” Brick patted Gideon on his back.

Gideon grabbed his helmet and ran out of the locker room. He reached the rest of his team at the end of the hall. Through the double doors, he heard the full stadium of fans screaming. He listened to the stadium announcer.

“Introducing the Virginia Beach Wolves!”

The double doors opened. Fireworks shot off, white and blue sparklers erupting on either side of the doors. The screams and howls from the crowd blanketed the entire place until it sounded like late night in the middle of a rain forest. When Gideon looked into the stands, he saw a mixture of fans wearing the colors of his team and fans wearing the Sharks’ traditional blue and gold colors. In his mind, more fans wore his team’s colors.

The She-Wolves cheerleaders jumped around, waving their pompoms as the team rushed through the hallway.

“And the quarterback for the Wolves, Gideon Wells!” the announcer exclaimed.

Gideon ran from the hallway. Before he could join his team, one cheerleader jumped in front of him. He managed to catch her before he knocked her down.

“Whoa. Easy there.” Gideon set her back on her feet.

“Sorry, Gideon.” She wrapped her arms around his neck after the collision and didn’t act ready to release him.

Gideon gazed at her and recognized her as the cheerleader who had been running into him during practices and team events. Through the padding and his gloves, he couldn’t feel her body, despite her best efforts to wriggle herself against him.

Even if dating cheerleaders hadn’t been against the rules, Gideon wouldn’t have gone for this woman anyway. He had to pry her arms from around his neck before he could keep going.

He met up with the team on the sidelines.

Dennis leaned over to Gideon. “Pay up.” Then he released a big belly laugh.

“I knew she was crazy. Who does that before a Super Bowl?” Gideon shook his
head.

Before the National Anthem could be sung, Dennis elbowed Gideon in his side. When Gideon looked at him, Dennis asked, “For real, are you good?’”

Gideon dropped his gaze to the ground before answering. “Yeah. Why?”

“The streets are talking, man.” Dennis shuffled in his spot before he spoke again. “You hurt?”

“Don’t worry about me.” Gideon gazed around to see if anyone could hear him. Nowadays, everyone had cameras and microphones everywhere.

“You want us to run the 300?”

Like the movie the name came from, Gideon and Dennis called the method to protect the quarterback
300
because they liked the strategy of funneling the opposing team toward the quarterback in smaller doses to handle them better.

Gideon shook his head. “Stick to my plays. Don’t deviate.”

“Whatever you say, man.” Dennis nodded. “As usual, you want to do things your way, right? Got it.”

Gideon ignored Dennis’s sly remark. Dennis had never had to be the glue to keep things from falling apart—families, friends, businesses. Gideon managed to hold everyone together. No one ever had to worry about him.

After the coin toss, the game started. Gideon got in a zone like he always did during a game. As long as he could see Dennis, he could get the ball to him. They worked like a machine.

As expected, the team looked out for Gideon, keeping the Sharks’ huge defensive line from crushing him. The Hawaiian team had brute force. They couldn’t account for the Wolves’ speed and Gideon’s tactical game play.

Before halftime, Gideon threw a pass to Dennis. He watched the ball barely spiraling in the air before his friend caught it and hauled ass down the field. Gideon didn’t expect to be hit from the side, sweeping his legs from under him as he crashed to the ground. The reserve of air he had in his lungs expelled from his body, leaving him limp and gasping.

Gideon heard a crack in his knee before crashing to the ground, but he could still move it. Good. That meant it couldn’t be broken. He brought his foot close to his body to prop up his aching joint.

He gripped a handful of grass as he lay on his back like a hapless turtle. Touching the blades of grass helped him slow down his breathing, to focus on the here and now. In his reclined position, he attempted to catch his breath as he gazed up at the sky starting to get a dusky-pink appearance. Even though no one stood around him, it felt like that 300
-
pound lineman sat on his chest.

Get up, Gid. Christ, stand up. Don’t let people worry about you. Get. The. Hell. Up.

Gideon sat up in time to peer up at the scoreboard. Dennis must have made the touchdown. His team led by six points, but he couldn’t get excited. Not yet. He had watched and participated in plenty of games that had been turned around after halftime.

As soon as Gideon stood, he knew his knee had taken far too much abuse from the hit.
After the field goal had been made, h
e walked off the field without limping or wincing, a feat considering how bad the joint felt.

Dennis managed to catch up to him as they funneled their way back down the hall. “You good?”

Gideon kept his gaze straight. “Those are some big guys, huh?” He smiled before turning to his friend. “I need a quick ice pack and I’ll be good.”

“Are you sure? I mean, we can get—”

“Drop it.” Gideon didn’t mean to snap at his buddy, but a lot rode on this game. “I apologize, man. It’s the game.”

Dennis put his big hand on top of Gideon’s helmet. “Get out of your head and get into the game. Keep getting the ball to me and all will go great.”

Despite getting the team to the Super Bowl, he knew all too well that owners and coaches liked cutting players with too many injuries. He’d come too far to get dropped now.